Jerry now conceived the plan of a mission to people of his own old life, men and women tempted in all points like unto himself. He applied for advice and help to one or two clergymen and some wealthy church members, only to meet with mortifying coldness or refusal. We can readily understand this caution, considering McAuley’s antecedents and qualifications. He could hardly read and write his own name. Churches are so fiercely criticised that they have to be very chary about espousing unpromising enterprises. It was a _natural_ caution if not a _Christian_ charity; worldly if not spiritual wisdom. Besides, are there not still things that He hides from the wise and prudent, and reveals unto babes? At length, McAuley found men able and willing to help, and with their aid he opened his Water Street Mission, in 1872. This situation is one of the worst in the lower part of the city, in the “Bloody Eighth Ward,” the haunt of river thieves, sailors and abandoned women of the lowest degree. It was a “rum start,” indeed, to the denizens of Water Street when one of their leaders was graduated from prison to prayer meeting; and by scores they “came to scoff, and remained to pray.” This mission was a success from the start, and to-day remains in full tide of beneficent operation. Two years ago Jerry was able to carry out his long-entertained desire to “do something for up-town sinners” by the establishment of the “Cremorne Mission.” It was a more daring undertaking because it had to do with more respectable sinners. He said it was a mistake to speak of those in the gutter as “hard cases;” their pride and reliance are gone, and they are not likely to be affronted or resistant when told they need a Savior; the prosperous and successful are the hard hearted; as you ascend the scale in means, intelligence and pretension, the harder the sinner becomes. On West Thirty-Second Street, just off Third Avenue, was the infamous Cremorne Gardens, one of the most dangerous because _not_ one of the lowest resorts of abandoned men and women. In this vicinity are many houses of ill repute of the higher rank; gamblers and sporting men have their “runways” in that part of the city. Jerry “carried the war into Africa” by leasing a building next the “Cremorne Garden,” so that in all respects the sad satire of DeFoe was and is reversed, “Wherever God erects a house of prayer The Devil always builds a chapel there; And ’twill be found upon examination The latter has the larger congregation.” The passenger by the elevated railroad, or one of the several street car lines that converge at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, may see any evening a brilliant prismatic sign of “Cremorne Garden,” and seemingly just above it this more brilliant legend: JERRY MCAULEY’S CREMORNE MISSION.